Sexual Misconduct Allegations Against Neil deGrasse Tyson Reveal the Complexity of Academic Inequality

In 2014, a woman named Tchiya Amet accused Neil deGrasse Tyson of raping her while they were both graduate students in astronomy at UT Austin, ultimately leading to her dropping out of the program. In the aftermath, I encouraged journalists at mainstream outlets to pursue it. But they told me that they ran into problems convincing their editors to allow them to publish what details they could find—for example, confirming that Amet was indeed enrolled in the program. The story was picked up by a blog on the religious commentary site Patheos in October of last year, and I reached out to journalists again, with a similar response.

I have, since I first learned about them, felt that Tchiya Amet’s allegations merited a response, and I waited, for years, for one. Another post from Patheos last week featured an interview with Amet along with stories of alleged sexual harassment from two other women, an astronomy professor and a Cosmos production assistant. (Buzzfeed also had a subsequent article citing a fourth woman with similar claims).

Tyson was finally prompted to respond this week with a Facebook note (which I assume, based on his celebrity and the nature of these accusations, was vetted by both a lawyer and a publicist). He admitted to engaging in behavior that he felt had been unintentionally misinterpreted—except the rape, claiming all sexual contact between him and Amet was consensual.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/sexual-misconduct-allegations-against-neil-degrasse-tyson-reveal-the-complexity-of-academic-inequality/